John Kerry Equates Increasing Taxes to Men and Women Dying in Iraq and Afghanistan

Daniel Halper

November 20, 2011 1:32 PM

In an on odd exchange on Meet the Press this morning, Senator John Kerry, a Democratic member of the supercommittee, suggested that taxes should be raised because men and women have died fighting for America in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he seemed to equate the sacrifice:

“You know the other day, David, I drove through, I went to Arlington Cemetery to visit the grave site of a college classmate of ours,” Kerry told Meet the Press moderator David Gregory. “I went with a bunch of my college buddies. As I was driving in there and I went by that new, flat area that's full of the graves of kids from Afghanistan, and from Iraq, some of whose funerals I’ve gone to over there, I've watched it grow, and I asked myself as we're going through there, you know, are we living up to the sacrifice, to the level of commitment these guys made for us? Are we willing to put our political lives on the line for our country, do what we need to do because we know it's right? And then I hear about this pledge, a pledge to a lobbyist that gets in the way of our living up to that sacrifice and doing what's right for our country. The fact is, I took a pledge. My pledge is to the Constitution of the United States. To defend it. My pledge is to well and faithfully execute my duties. And that does not include living up to a pledge to a lobbyist for a deficit reduction committee that is now hung up because we won't do the Bush tax cuts permanently, even though we could have accelerated tax reform by next year. I just want to say this, I say to Jon Kyl, I say to my Republican colleagues, we're here all day. We are ready to do $1.2 trillion. Not less than it. That's what we were told to do. That's the law. We're ready to do it. If they will give up their insistence of the Bush tax cuts, we can get this done.”